Life Sells Chips (or, Chips Sell Life)

If you want to sell something, what better place than the most-watched television program of the year?  That, as those who follow American football or American pop culture could tell you, would be the Super Bowl, the National Football League’s annual championship game. Small wonder that advertisers spend millions of dollars for a single 30 second ad during the broadcast. Most often these ads are for things like beer, cell phones, cars, insurance, etc., but sometimes something a little different shows up.  Six years ago, for instance, Focus on the Family ran a pro-life ad featuring the mother of college football star Tim Tebow, which created a lot of discussion about the cause of life and, as I detailed in this post last week, saved at least one life.

Freddy Carstairs appearing in Doritos Super Bowl Ad (image from youTube)

    A Super Bowl ad promoting human life made waves again last night . . . but not in quite the same way as the Tebow ad did.  The commercial in question was advertising Doritos tortilla chips.  In this one, we see a mother happily looking at an ultrasound image of her late-stage unborn baby on a monitor; the mother then turns to her husband, who is contentedly munching on Doritos.  To the mother’s increasing annoyance, the father waves one of the salty snacks in front of the screen, where we can see the unborn baby reaching for the chip.  Finally, the exasperated mother grabs the chip from her husband’s hand and hurls it at her feet, at which point the unborn baby on the monitor, apparently eager to eat the chip, appears to dive for the “exit”, at which point the mother goes into labor.

    First of all, it’s a pretty sure bet that this ad is not intended (certainly not by Frito-Lay, the producer of Doritos) to make a pro-life statement.  According to an article that ran a couple weeks ago on lifesitenews.com, the creator of the ad, an Australian filmmaker named Peter Carstairs, came up with the idea when he saw ultrasound images of his unborn son Freddy (who was born last year). There is no indication that Carstairs was looking to make a pro-life statement; he did find the concept funny.  Frito-Lay chose Carstairs’ ad, no doubt because it tested well, and was unusual enough to stand out from the the welter of weird and ridiculous ads striving to make an impression upon Super Bowl viewers.

Ultrasound baby reaching for chip (image from Youtube)

    And make an impression it did, in some cases positive, in some . . . less so.  Apparently, NARAL PRo-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League) found this tortilla-affirming commercial to be guilty of the shameful “antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses” (see article here), demonstrating yet again that pro-abortion fanatics cannot abide any suggestion that unborn humans are, well, human.  That’s why they insist on using dehumanizing terms like “fetus”.  That is also why they despise ultrasound, because sonograms make unavoidably obvious the already irrefutable scientific fact that unborn babies are not just “clumps of cells”, but little people.  Their objection to this particular commercial is not so much that the “fetus” is doing things that an unborn baby can’t do, but that the ultrasound image is being shown at all.  That’s why they fight tooth and nail against laws mandating that women seeking abortion first be shown an ultrasound of the “product of conception” in their womb: because ultrasound changes minds, even ordinary ultrasounds of unborn humans doing ordinary things.  As I detail in my post “The Truth Is Our Ally In The Fight For Human Life”:

    The abortion providers can only argue that simply requiring them to show truthful, unaltered pictures of what (or more accurately, as the images show, who) is being aborted will dissuade some of their customers.  A federal court, in striking down one of these laws in North Carolina, said in its decision [according to pro-life attorney Howard Slugh] that the law “explicitly promotes a pro-life message by demanding the provision of facts that all fall on one side of the abortion debate.”  Notice that the law does not require the suppression of “facts” that fall on the other side of the debate: it simply requires that the mother know all the facts before undergoing abortion, and the facts happen to be pro-life.  And so the abortionists are reduced to asking the court to help them hide the plain, incontrovertible truth.  As Slugh notes:

All these sources agree that the more a mother knows about her child, the less likely she is to abort him.  This is not because ultrasound images are misleading or politicized; it is because they supply a mother with truthful information necessary for making an informed choice.

Champion of Human Life?

    Last night’s silly little Doritos ad, has (most likely unintentionally) reminded millions of people about the truth of human life in the womb. I doubt that Frito-Lay was trying to make a pro-life statement with their ad: they probably saw it as just a funny take on an everyday experience that would help them sell chips.  It’s quite possible that, if they determine that the unfavorable attention from abortion promoters is hurting the bottom line, they may issue an apology and pull the ad from the internet (if YouTube doesn’t do it first).  Let’s hope not; we shouldn’t allow the abortion industry and its apologists to silence the Truth.  It might even be worth buying a bag of Doritos . . .   

"Feed The Birds" - Mary Poppins & The Synod On The Family

I just love the song "Feed The Birds", a beautiful little paean to compassion from the movie Mary Poppins:

All around the Cathedral the Saints and Apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it, you know that they're smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

It's evident, I think, that it's compassion for the "little old bird woman" herself, and not merely for the birds, that brings joy to the Saints and Apostles.
     Below I also provide a few thoughts on why the Bishops gathered in the Synod on the Family would do well to watch Mary Poppins before they do anything else.

     I think it could only help if the bishops assembled in Rome for the Synod on the Family took a couple hours off to watch the movie Mary Poppins.  Since they seem interested in talking about everything but "The Family", taking a little film break can't hurt, but more than that, they need to see this movie.

     I say this, by the way, as someone who is decidedly not a Disney fan.  My children saw few Disney movies growing up, none more than once, except this one.  Sure, it has it's flaws (not the least of which is Dick Van Dyke's atrocious attempt at a cockney accent), and it's share of Disney goofiness, but there's something beautiful about it.  At the beginning, the family is falling apart, and moving in opposite directions: the father, Mr. Banks, is so caught up in his career that barely notices his surroundings, including his wife and children; Mrs. Banks devotes most of her attention to political advocacy, and the neglected children, Jane and Michael, respond by running wild and tormenting the governesses to whom the parents leave the task of "molding" their "breed".  That is, until Mary Poppins becomes their new governess.

Jane Darwell as the bird woman in Mary Poppins

     Much of the fun in the film comes the magical adventures the children experience in the company of Mary Poppins: jumping into sidewalk drawings, visiting a house where laughing causes them to float up to the ceiling (and where they can only come back to earth by thinking sad thoughts), flying up through the chimney and dancing on the London rooftops, and so on.  The most magical thing Mary Poppins does, however, is to bring the divided family back together . . . and then take herself out of the picture, sacrificing her own feelings so she won't come between them.  The movie ends with Parents and Children united in love, and Mary Poppins, the catalyst, quietly moving on to her next assignment.

     It certainly couldn't hurt the Synod Fathers to take a little break from their deliberations, where, if we can trust the news reports, they seem to be paying little attention to anything that could reunite the family.  After the film, they might want to take a look at the Book of Malachi, whose closing verse starts with the same theme we see at the end of Mary Poppins :

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Malachi 4:6)

But that's not the end; the second half of the verse, the final words in the Old Testament, leave us with a warning:

lest I come and smite the land with a curse.

Let us please pray that the Lord grant our shepherds the wisdom to heed His Word.

Art For A Degraded Age

Warning: the post below deals with material inappropriate for small children, for adults with artistic taste, or for anyone with a sense of decency.

Is it art, or is it architectural smut?

   The other day I heard a commentator on Catholic radio say that the Church has always "considered church buildings to be arguments”, where not just the paintings and statues, but the architecture and use of space itself teach us what it is to be part of an ordered universe with God at its head.  This is a theme  I’ve broached a few times myself, here and here in terms of church architecture, and more broadly in regard to the arts in general here and, just last week, here. Catholicism has always  understood that art and the arts play an important role in shaping our understanding of our world and our place in it.

    Today I want to take a quick look at one recent example of a very different argument in the architecture, an instance of where, as a society, we’re going in the wrong direction. The ugly little building pictured to the left, designed by Atelier Van Lieshout for the Ruhrtriennale Festival in Bochum, Germany, is supposed to resemble two people engaged in the sexual act. According to Rookje Meijerjink, a publicist for Atelier Van Lieshout, many people are delighted by it.  The Daily Mirror (full article here) quotes her as saying:

The response by both professionals, press and the general public has been very positive, the installation has featured in a large number of renowned Dutch and German newspapers, magazines and television stations, and has gathered a lot of attention online.

With all due respect to the professionals, press, public, etc., I’m afraid I can’t agree: I contend that the building is ugly, degrading, and anti-human, and the very fact that an angry crowd hasn’t burned it to the ground is a sad commentary on the sorry state of a once Christian culture.

    It’s defenders, of course, roll out the usual quasi-intellectual artspeak gobbledygook in an attempt to make this eyesore seem like a respectable artistic creation.  The Daily Mirror tells us that it “is intended to show the power of humanity over the natural world, and our disrupted relationship with nature”; Ms. Meijerink assures us that  

The artwork pays tribute to the ingenuity, the sophistication and the capacities of humankind, to the power of organisation, and to the use of this power to dominate, domesticate the natural environment.

Indeed.  It looks more to me like something a perverted pre-adolescent might make out of lego blocks, which I suppose is in keeping with the infantilism of much that passes as “art” these days. Specifically, while it is obviously intended to resemble a sexual act, the participants don’t really look like human beings.  The crude, block-like design of the structure is suggestive of people, but could just as easily be robots, animals, or any combination of the above.

    Also, while I don’t believe that it’s really possible to express the true beauty of the marital embrace in a work of representative art (for a variety of reasons both moral and aesthetic), this creation doesn’t even try. Everything from the not-quite-human crudeness of the forms to the functional rather than intimate postures of the figures seems to be an intentional mockery of anything that could be called “love making” in favor of “mating”,  or perhaps other words too uncouth to reproduce in this space. In short, rather than showing "the power of humanity over the natural world", it is showing humanity subjugated by unthinking animal passions.

The open arms of St. Peter's Basilica

    Those aren’t the only reasons why this structure so perfectly captures the spirit of its age.  It isn’t hidden in a private gallery, or in some xxx domain on the internet where the prurient-minded must intentionally seek it out: it is huge, public, and in-your-face, where no man, woman , or child could possibly miss it. One can’t help but be impressed (granted, in a somewhat nauseated way) by how this one piece of . . . um . . . "art" . . . so perfectly incorporates within itself so many of the most toxic features of the current popular culture: the celebration of ugliness over beauty, a pornification of human sexuality that insists on infusing it into everything while at the same time turning it into something no more exalted than bestial rutting, and the aggressive insistence that everyone, willing or not, must wallow together in the filth.

What a contrast between this nasty little piece of work and the sweeping colonnades of St. Peter's Basilica, which are meant to represent loving arms open to embrace the whole world with the love of Christ.  Now, I know that it's tempting to dismiss the whole thing as a puerile, harmless prank.  I disagree.  Sure, this one piece of ugliness, which will probably soon come down anyway (the show of which it is a part is scheduled to close in a couple of weeks) is not the end of civilization as we have known it.  But it's not just one piece; it is one more piece, one more bit of degradation, pushing the boundaries of the acceptable just a little beyond the last thing that was "no big deal", one more step toward cultural oblivion. And there will be something else, just a little more "transgressive", after this, and another, and another.  The Devil is in the details, and he has nothing else to do with his time; he'll keep on pushing, forever if given the chance.  

    That's why the "culture wars" shouldn't be dismissed as a distraction, or a waste of time: they have become the front lines in the eternal combat between the armies of Christ and those of Satan.  We know our General will win in the end, but there are still plenty of battles, and souls, we can lose along the way if we refuse to fight.

Christ or Anti-Christ? Art And The Power Of Imagination

Who do you see in the picture?

     The Incarnation remains among the most astounding of Catholic doctrines.  It's not easy to believe that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word,

 . . . though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phillipians 2:6-8)

The Infinite God, St. Paul tells us, willingly took on finite humanity in the Incarnation.  Because we believe this, Catholics have always understood that humble and material things can serve as channels for greater, immaterial things.  The chief examples, aside from the God-Man Jesus Christ Himself, are the Sacraments, which are created things that serve as vehicles of God’s Grace, but we also find the same principle at work, albeit on a less exalted level, in art, music, and other works of the imagination.

    In recent posts about Star Trek [here] and about biblical films such as Noah [here] I have discussed the power of images and other works that appeal to the imagination to mislead and confuse. Such things can also enlighten us, of course, if they are done properly, and deepen our understanding (which is why the Catholic faith has always had such a large audio-visual component).  I recently came across an interesting example of an imaginative work being used in a more positive manner.  Two imaginative works, actually, because it involves a renaissance fresco appearing in a modern work of fiction.

    The book is michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic novel Father Elijah.  I’m thinking in particular of a scene in which Fr. Elijah himself and a friend are looking at a wall painting in the Cathedral of Orvieto:

Elijah went over to another mural.

His eyes were drawn to the central figure of the image, a figure of Christ.  How strange, he thought, to see a representation of the Lord with the figure of Satan whispering in His ear,and his arm penetrating His robes.  Is that Christ’s hand or the devil’s that emerges from the folds of cloth?

It was not a literal representation of a scriptural scene, he concluded; although it might be the artist’s imaginative rendering of the temptation in the desert?  But there was something out of character in the way Christ leaned into Satan’s embrace and listened with such attention.

He stared at it for a long time.  Suddenly, the meaning of the mural became clear, like a scene viewed through lenses revolving into focus.  The blurred shapes of reality drew together into a sharp, piercing landscape of moral disaster.

The figure held in the devil’s embrace was not Christ but the Antichrist.

Elijah understood why Don Matteo had wanted him to see it.  Now he knew why the old friar would not tell him the reason for his request.  Matteo had wanted Elijah to discover the secret of the mural himself, and in the process, to observe the mechanics of perception.

     I immediately knew the painting by it's description, because I had used a picture of it to illustrate a blog post last winter (called, appropriately enough, "'Choice' And The Father Of Lies", here).  The painting creates a vivid picture of Satan's usual modus operandi: evil working in the guise of good.  The striking image gets the message across much more memorably than a simple explanation (hence the old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words").

     But there's more to it than that.  Notice that the characters looking at the mural above don't at first realize what they're seeing; neither did I, only it took me a lot longer to figure it out than it does Fr. Elijah.  But that's part of what makes the painting so effective: we think we're seeing Jesus, only to realize that we're actually looking at his opposite.  We are not merely seeing a depiction of deception, we are in fact deceived by the artist's work: we experience deception itself, "in the flesh" as it were.  That's a powerful lesson.  That's why, in O'Brien's novel, Don Matteo wanted Fr. Elijah to experience it first-hand.

     Very often our faith is hindered by emotional barriers: those of us who are believers sometimes give in to doubt, even though we've experienced God's presence;  unbelievers often are incapable of accepting any evidence at all because of such barriers.  A well-crafted work of visual or imaginative art can often weaken those barriers by creating a new emotional experience, and so lead to a new or deeper understanding, while bad or disordered art can lead us further into darkness.  What we see, hear, or read can make all the difference.

     

Biblical Films: What Would St. Paul Do? (Worth Revisiting)

This Worth Revisiting post is based on two earlier posts first published on March 31st and April 1st 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

When is a movie not “just a movie”?

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to a popular Catholic call-in radio show on my drive to work in the morning.  Sometimes I hear something that gets the figurative wheels turning in my brain, and the result is a blog post, like this. Other times the host or his guests, who normally do a great job,  seem to miss an important point, which also can inspire me to write something (as here).  It's very rare indeed that I think that the Catholic commentators on this program are just plain wrong, but it happened one morning last spring, when the topic was the recently released biblical epic Noah. I was so worked up that I dashed off not one, but two, blog posts addressing brain chemistry, movies, and catholicism.  Today's post is a condensed and updated version of those two posts.

Russell Crowe as the protagonist in Noah

     Let's start at the beginning.  As I was listening to my favorite Catholic apologetics radio program one morning the guest, himself a very well-known Catholic radio personality, made the following remark:  “There’s nothing much your kids can see that will really damage them, as long as you’re watching with them.”  He quickly qualified (contradicted, really) his statement, saying “I’m not saying you should watch steamy sex scenes with them” (why not, if nothing much will damage them?).  These remarks came up in a discussion of the recently released movie Noah.  The host, who had seen the movie and had a mostly positive view, added, “after all, it’s only a movie”!

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

     Where to begin?  I was amazed, first of all, that two intelligent, well-read, orthodox Catholics would be so dismissive of the power of images, and the emotional experience wrought by drama, to permeate our consciousness.  This is something the Church has always understood:  why else the great art, stained-glass windows, cathedrals and Gregorian chant, the whole “smells and bells” routine?  Why else the traditional condemnation of “impure” images, and the stern warnings to steer clear of their dangers?

     The findings of modern neuroscience tend to confirm this ancient wisdom (which itself has been more than confirmed by experience over the centuries).  Research shows that pornography, for example, has profound and possibly permanent effects on brain development and chemistry [see here], and the same is true (although perhaps not as dramatically) of other powerful experiences. Children and adolescents are particularly susceptible (see here and here), but even as adults our brain is still developing to a certain degree. According to the Brain Institute [my italics]: “New findings on the adult brain establish two principles. First, the adult brain continues to grow and develop throughout our entire life.  Second, brain development in adulthood is shaped mostly by outside stimuli” [here].  Simply explaining something to our children after the fact can’t take away the effect of the images and emotions they have experienced, and by exposing ourselves to such experiences we expose our own psyche to influences we are better off avoiding (hence the old Catholic maxim: “Avoid the near occasion of sin”).  And, given all that, a movie is never “just a movie”: it is a visual and emotional experience that can have far-reaching consequences.

Even the Devil can quote Scripture

     Biblical films, such as last year’s Noah and Exodus (released in the spring of 2015), present complications beyond ugly, frightening, or impure images.  We all understand that a movie maker will need to add things to a story, or change some things, or leave certain details out in order to transform a written work into a viable film. Of course that’s the case.  In the case of the story of Noah, for instance, the Book of Genesis provides only the barest outlines of a story: a filmmaker must necessarily supply quite a bit of his own imagination to make it work on the big screen.  If in the process he significantly changes the underlying meaning, however, and still sells it as the same story, that’s an injustice to the original work, and a false promise to the audience that they’re getting “Story A” when in fact it’s “Story X” in disguise (I discuss my ideas about this topic in greater details in a series of posts on Peter Jackson’s misbegotten adaptation of The Hobbit, here).

Christian Bale gives a unique interpretation of Moses in Exodus

     In the case of a purportedly Christian film, and particularly a Biblical film, we Catholics have a serious responsibility that goes far beyond the concern we might have for the integrity of a particular story.  The Bible, after all, is the Inspired Word of God.  While it is understood that certain liberties must be taken in order to turn a written text into a viable film, we need to be on the lookout for an adaptation that trivializes God’s word; both a proper sense of reverence, and a need to prevent giving the impression that Holy Scripture need not be taken seriously, compel us.  

     Not only that, a poorly conceived or executed film that distorts the underlying message of the Biblical proclamation can cause serious harm, much more substantial than the harm done to the work and reputation of a secular author.  We live in an age in which Biblical literacy is at lower ebb than it has been for centuries.  Films like Noah and Exodus may be the only sustained exposure a very large number of people will have to the Biblical account, and given the powerful emotional impact of such images, it can be a profound and lasting exposure.  People will assume that a movie billed as the Scriptural story will, in fact, be the Scriptural story.  A seriously flawed film can give a false understanding of Christianity, and even drive people away.  It’s not alarmist to suggest that, for some people, such an experience may jeopardize their salvation (don’t laugh: some years back a person I know, a well-educated person, cited The Da Vinci Code as a major factor in her decision to leave the Church).

Hold fast to what is good . . .

     So here we are. There is a great temptation on the part of us Believers, disheartened by the unrelenting secularity that has engulfed our culture, to jump on the band wagon whenever a remotely Christian-looking film emerges from the fetid swamps of Hollywood (as we saw with Noah).  We need to remember that movies are a money-making venture.  After the unexpected (by the movie industry, at least, and elite "opinion-makers") success of The Passion of the Christ ten years ago, Hollywood realized that there was a badly underserved market for religious films, and nature abhors a vacuum.  They’ve been trying to replicate the success of Mel Gibson’s film ever since.  While some filmmakers may share Gibson’s zeal, others surely do not, and many will understand neither the material with which they’re working nor the audience they’re targeting.  Still others will have a consciously subversive intent.  

     We do have some guidance in Holy Scripture for this sort of situation: St. Paul tells us, “Test everything; hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5:21-22).  This should be our standard in evaluating purportedly Biblical or Christian films: we should ask ourselves, What Would St. Paul Do?

Star Trek, Secularism, and Christian Faith

Data talks to Worf about faith

 One of the great entertainment success stories of the past half-century has been the Star Trek television and film franchise.  I've enjoyed watching its various iterations since I was a child, at first because it's great fun, but more recently for another reason as well.  I've discovered that, although most of the action is set several centuries in the future, Star Trek provides a useful window into the world-view of late twentieth and early twenty-first century cultural elites, a world-view spread and reinforced through the popular media.

    In later versions of Star Trek, for instance, perhaps as a reflection of the way that western opinion makers want to celebrate every culture in the world but their own (which they tend to treat with disdain), Earth seems to be the only planet whose inhabitants have "outgrown" their need for religion; everyone else in the galaxy is still fully engaged with the traditions of their forebears.  The interactions of the (mostly human) main characters with these other beings nicely illustrate how our secular friends view those of us who take religion seriously.

    The episode "Rightful Heir" from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation is a good example. It focuses on the the religious practices and beliefs of the fictional alien race of Klingons, in particular their expectation that Kahless, who had founded their empire 1,000 before, would return to them in the flesh.  A Klingon claiming to be Kahless does indeed make an appearance, and a DNA test confirms his identity.  There are incongruities, however, and he is eventually discovered to be a clone created by Klingon priests.  Nevertheless, desite the disappointment of their hopes and the trickery of their religious leaders, at the end we see most of the Klingons still confidently awaiting the coming of their savior.

    I found one scene at the end of the show to be particularly interesting.  It is a dialogue between two of the regular characters: Data, who is an android (a human-like robot who has, apparently, achieved something like consciousness - this is science fiction, after all), and Worf, the only main character of Klingon parentage. The events surrounding Kahless have raised some questions in Data's mind:

Data: May I ask a question?  In the absence of empirical data, how will you determine whether or not this is the real Kahless?

Worf: It is not an empirical matter, it is a matter of . .  . (pause) . . . faith.

Data: (musing) Faith . . . (gesturing to Klingons kneeling before the empty throne of Kahless) They insisted upon waiting here until they see Kahless again.  Their "faith" appears unaffected by his inability to defeat Gowron. They still believe. (thoughtful pause)  I once had what could be considered a crisis of the spirit.

Worf: You?

Data: Yes. The Starfleet officers who first activated me on Omicron Theta told me I was an android - nothing more than a sophisticated machine with human form. However, I realized that if I was simply a machine, I could never be anything else; I could never grow beyond my programming. I found that difficult to accept. So I chose to believe... that I was a person; that I had the potential to be more than a collection of circuits and subprocessors. It is a belief which I still hold.

Worf : How did you come to your decision?

Data: I made . . . a leap of faith.

Two thoughts immediately came to mind when I saw this scene again the other night.  First, this is just how secularists perceive religious faith, either pure intuition, as in Worf's case: feelings based on no "empirical evidence"; or a "leap of faith" in the sense that Data uses the term, in which the leaper simply chooses to believe that what he desires to be true is actually the truth.  

     The second thing that struck me is that neither of these versions of "faith" correspond to the Catholic meaning of the word.  To see the difference, compare the scene above to the following passage from the gospel of Matthew:

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.  But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out for fear.  But immediately he spoke to them, saying, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear."  And Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."  He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.  (Matthew 14: 25-32)

   Peter does not need to take a “leap of faith” in the sense that Data means it, nor is he relying on intuition.  He not only sees with his own eyes Jesus walking on the water, he actually walks on water himself, before his faith falters and he sinks.  You can’t get much more empirical than that.  When Jesus tells him that his faith is weak, then, he clearly is not talking about believing something with no evidence: he means trusting what you have truly seen and experienced. Christian Faith is not blind faith.

Allessandro Allori's St. Peter Walking On The Water

    St. Peter himself would later write “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), and in fact there is no shortage of reasons, and no lack of evidence, for God and for Christianity.  There are cogent philosophical arguments from St. Thomas Aquinas and others, well-attested miracles, and the witness of countless Christians whose lives were transformed when they put their trust in the promises of Christ.  The evidence is there.  What is lacking is the will to see it for what it is, to trust what we have seen and heard.

    It is important to bear this distinction in mind when discussing faith with those who don't share it, or who have not been well-formed in their faith.  If we accept the Star Trek version of Christian faith we put ourselves in the position of having to defend a position built on fantasy.  The reality, however, is that we do have the Truth, and we really are prepared to give an account of the hope in us. Let's leave the science fiction explanations to the other guys.

"Regina Coeli Laetare", from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana

     This lovely piece of music is a little like the Treasure Hidden in a Field (see Matthew 13:44).  Pietro Mascagni's  Cavalleria Rusticana is a secular opera, and a turgid account of betrayal, jealousy, and murder.  At one point in the drama, however, the inhabitants of the little Sicilian village where these unsavory events unfold sing this beautiful version of the traditional Catholic prayer, Regina Coeli, Laetare ("Queen of Heaven, Rejoice").

    The prayer itself is of ancient origin.  Our oldest record of it comes from the twelfth century, but the website ourcatholicprayers.com tells us:

According to The Golden Legend, a famous 13th century work about the saints, Pope St. Gregory the Great heard angels singing the first three verses from the Regina Coeli during a procession in the 6th century and was inspired to add the fourth line “Ora pro nobis deum” (“pray for to us to God” in Latin). Although this story is itself considered to be a legend, it is, as Father Herbert Thurston once put it in his book Familiar Prayers, “inseparably associated with the Regina Coeli.”

We pray it in place of the Angelus during the season of Easter, at which time it also serves as the the Marian Antiphon at the end of Compline (Night Prayer). I have posted the prayer itself, in both English and Latin, below the clip.

Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.

The Son whom you merited to bear, alleluia.

Has risen, as He said, alleluia.

Pray for us to God, alleluia.

V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.

R. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Let us pray.

O God, who through the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ gave rejoicing to the world, grant, we pray, that through his Mother, the Virgin Mary, we may obtain the joy of everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Regina cæli, lætare, alleluia:

R. Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,

Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia,

R. Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

Gaude et lætare, Virgo Maria, alleluia.

R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

Oremus.

     Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi,
     mundum lætificare dignatus es:
     præsta, quæsumus, ut per eius Genitricem Virginem Mariam,
     perpetuæ capiamus gaudia vitæ.
     Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. R. Amen.

"Real Funny Jokes About Abortion"? Dispatches From The Culture Of Death Part Two

“Be Sober, be watchful.  Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  Resist him, firm in your faith.”  (1 Peter 8-9)

     Last week, in my discussion of an essay by Ezekiel Emmanuel supporting the idea that we should not try to keep people alive beyond 75 years old, I said:

The more often such opinions come from such sources, the less unthinkable such opinionThes become in the wider world until they eventually become commonplace.  We have seen this strategy employed to perfection in recent years in regard to the redefinition of marriage. 

The Successful Game Plan

The picture-perfect example of how to bring about a massive change in public perceptions and sentiment, in fact, has been the Gay Rights movement, which eventually built the stunningly successful Gay Marriage campaign.  The strategy was explicitly laid out almost three decades ago in 1987, in an article by Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill (later expanded into a book) called “The Overhauling Of Straight America” (entire article here). Kirk and Pill call for a graduated media campaign to change public opinion, starting with making homosexuality seem commonplace by talking about it constantly, particularly in the entertainment media; then by portraying homosexuals as victims, at which point they can enlist supporters outside their own circles by appealing to a sense of justice, and only then seeking to destroy the credibility of any critics by using their media reach to portray opponents  as ignorant haters, bigots, etc.  Anyone who has been paying attention for the last three decades has seen this strategy play out precisely as scripted (we are now in the final “destroy the opposition” phase).

     This idea didn’t start with Kirk and Pill, of course, nor with the Gay Rights movement.  Some might recognize the ideas of master “community organizer” Saul Alinsky, who in turn was simply putting a groovy spin on long-standing communist agitprop doctrine - the need to use the entertainment media to shape public opinion explains why the communists were so interested in Hollywood in the thirties and the forties.  Kirk and Pill also saw the potential of the entertainment industry, but they had a resource that was not available to Stalin-era agitators: television.  Therefore:

Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message--of normalcy.

“Desensitization” was necessary before the public would accept the rest of the gay rights program, and television did in fact prove to be the perfect medium (feel free explore the links here if you don’t believe that this strategy was employed to the fullest).

If it worked for Gay Marriage, why not abortion?

Mindy Kaling

     This brings us to today, and the curious case of Mindy Kaling, as recounted by Brent Bozell [article here]. Mindy, Bozell tells us, “not only stars in her own sitcom on Fox called 'The Mindy Project,' she’s in charge of it.”  Her character on the show is an OB/GYN.  Professional feminist and pro-abortion activist Amanda Marcotte sees Kaling’s show as a ready-made vehicle for the same sort of desensitization that the Gay Rights people carried out so successfully:

Abortion is actually a perfect topic for a half-hour comedy because it touches on so many themes that comedy writers love to mine for the laughs . . . How easy it is, if you let go of the fear of getting letters from anti-choice nuts, to make some really funny jokes about abortion.

     The problem for Marcotte is that most people, even those who are generally in favor of legal abortion, don’t see the humorous potential in the intentional slaughter of innocent life in the womb.  Kaling herself, who doesn’t appear to be pro-life but does seem to know her craft, at first politely rejected the idea of using her show “to make some really funny jokes about abortion”, telling an interviewer: “It would be demeaning to the topic to talk about it in a half-hour sitcom”.  Unfortunately for Mindy, nobody is allowed to sit on the sidelines for this battle, and the abortion industry and its cheerleaders turned up the heat.  Soon she was apologizing for her failure to humorously promote abortion on her program, and has now reached the point where she says she “has faith” that she will find a “hilarious take on abortion that’s saying something new.”  Don’t worry, folks, “The Mindy Project” will be rolling out its abortion laugh-riot any day now.

     This is not the first recent attempt by the abortionists to follow the gay marriage media  playbook: there was the Abortion Comedy “Obvious Child”, and creepy “comedienne” Sarah Silverman has been trying to mine the laugh-potential of abortion for some time.  “Obvious Child”, however, was much more popular with pro-abortion movie critics than it was with the public, so maybe Anthony Esolen is right [see here] that the average person’s innate common sense won’t allow too many of them to be taken in too deeply by the Culture of Death for too long.  Maybe . . . but I’m not sure that he isn’t underestimating the power of people in our fallen state to convince themselves of just about anything, especially if it means the orgy can continue.  Be that as it may, brace yourself: I suspect we’ll be seeing more and more of the “lighter side” of abortion from the entertainment media in the future. Be sober and be watchful . . .

    
(This throwback was first published in September of 2014)